Parents: Teen driver went to prom, showed no remorse after crash

Victims' families issue statements as driver pleads guilty

UPDATED 10:25 PM EDT May 16, 2013

VERSAILLES, Ind. -

Parents of three teens killed in a Ripley County crash issue statements as the surviving driver pleads guilty.

The 17-year-old driver pleaded guilty Thursday to reckless homicide and reckless driving in the March 7 crash. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail, with 30 of those days suspended. He'll also be on probation and will lose his license until he's 21 years old.

Timothy "Curtis" Bowman, Jacob Vogel and Samantha Hansen died when two pickups collided outside Holton, Ind. while the high school students were returning to school from a Future Farmers of America event.

"Samantha lived her life to help people," Hansen's mother said in a statement. "She had beautiful dreams. She wanted to be a nurse, she wanted to marry her country boy, she wanted to have 4 children. We will never know how her life would have turned out."

The survivors told troopers that the teen driver sped up in an attempted to beat the other pickup to the intersection.

Hansen's mother said she believed the driver used Samantha to get permission to leave the event, even though she said the girl didn't want to go. She said her daughter grabbed the arm of another girl, who survived the crash, and asked her to go to "keep these boys out of trouble."

"Many times I have heard that it was kids being kids. It was not!" Hansen's mother said. "It was a very bad choice made by you that caused this tragic accident."

Vogel's mother said her son planned to join his father, uncles, cousins and neighbors and join the Friendship Volunteer Fire Department.

"(The driver's) decision, knowing there was a stop sign ahead, he shifted into fifth gear and accelerated above interstate speed on a country road, and because of this decision, our community lost three young people who had the potential to make differences in all of our lives," Vogel's mother wrote.

Hansen's mother and Bowman's mother each cited the driver's attendance at prom as proof that he showed no remorse, and Bowman's mother said the teen joined her family's church, rather than some others closer to his home, and tried to befriend her 12-year-old daughter on Facebook after the crash.

"We are the ones that have been walking around with our heads down for fear of making eye contact with anyone," she wrote. "It is touching yet (hurtful) to go into a public place where young people are working, and they are speaking in a much softer and gentler voice. You can hear the pain in their voice."

Bowman's mother said her son planned to start his own forestry business, and she said that he lived up to his initials, TCB, because he always took care of business.

Bowman's mother said she thought the teen should be punished because he did not slow down or try to swerve as he approached the oncoming pickup driven by a friend, and she also said he was a habitual reckless driver.

"His lifestyle may be interrupted for a short while," Bowman's mother wrote. "Our lifestyle has and will be changed forever."

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